Note from Flight# WN5627 from AUS -> ATL (2 hours and 15 mins.) Layover of 1 hour and 1 mins. Flight# 5535 from ATL -> TPA (1 hour and 25 mins.)

It always amazes me to look out over the wing and watch as the only thing between me and the ground becomes a bunch of physics and engineering. Oh, and air. That the air seems less substantial than the physics (simply knowledge) and the engineering (put into practice) is somehow deeply mystic.

Post- The title is copied directly from the Evernote entry that I used to record the thought in the moment. I have no idea how Evernote 'knew' that much about my location and itinerary. I guess it's been snooping in my gmail and put a lot of bits and pieces together before I turned off the wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, and cell signal?

Creeping me out here guys. >.>

On Brokerages

ETrade is crap. I'm sitting with a threatened credit spread that I want to butterfly further OTM. There's no way to do that in ETrade's interface. What a crock. Because I have a small account I don't have the capital available to do it in two trades and there's literally no way to put the trade in as a butterfly because their interface can't understand that I'm selling 2 of the same option to close and open position at the same time.

I hate this brokerage.

Live trading strategy

So far my trades have been exclusively iron condors on underlyings with high(ish) IV rank at 65+% probability OTM on both sides. I've done a couple of re-wingings (re-opening a closed vertical on the untested side of an existing IC).

The procedure is roughly as follows:
Look at Dough for interesting products (could be replaced with a stock scan if  my TDA account were funded, but Dough's curated list is faster at the moment).
Load up the option chain in TOS and look at the proper OTM strikes. If the credit is >50% of the width then proceed. Otherwise go back to Dough.
Put the credit and BPE (which is the strike width - credit received on a symmetrical IC) into my spreadsheet and let it calculate my exits. If I like the exits (which are calculated based on a %age of max profit) then I'll put the trade on.

The formulas in the spreadsheet are built around getting a high return on the risked money which I use the BPE for. Since it's all melted together (and assuming my formulas are correct; which I've checked a bajillion times) I just select a target % of max profit from the automatically calculated 25, 30, 50 and 75% and nearly always come out at least 20% return on BPE with all commissions calculated for. So I can just plug in the strikes (or manually copy BPE into the spreadsheet from TOS) and the price I'm contemplating selling the IC for and look at where my exits would be.  Often they're negative which just means there's not enough premium to sell to overcome my commission cost. Sometimes the exit price will be a couple of pennies and I'll usually skip those because I expect I'd have to wait on the trade for too long.

The Supertrader, round 3

https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/shows/must-see-tt

Episode 2014-02-12

Great interview. My 3 takeaways:

1. Get a buddy. Trading as a group has a multiplying effect.
2. Trade mechanically. Don't think about the position; analyse the position and treat it accordingly.
3. Keep it simple. Tarting things up with charts and analysis just makes it harder.

Bonus round: Trade what works for you. Duh, but sometimes you have to be reminded.

For some reason I think I had a different takeaway, bringing it to 4. I'll have to watch the video again. Planned to do that anyway.

Trading update

I still have a ton of proto-posts to get done. Nevertheless, bit of an update.

Half the GOOG iron condor closed. I've split all my exits now (well, most of them; it turns out it didn't make sense to split some of them) so that I can close one or the other spread on a stock swing without worrying about closing them all at once.
I have no idea why I didn't think of that (or remember it? whatever). A good friend of mine had to point it out to me.

So my first TWTR spread closed over a 2 day period as well. One side closed on the 4th and the other on the 6th. For a total profit of $29.04, including all commission costs. Took 10 days to close it. So I risked $115 to make $29 in 10 days. Not too shabby? I've responded by opening a MAR iron condor in the same. IV rank &etc are good for March too.

I have an iron condor on SINA that's half closed too. I need to look at that one again because...

I've learned that re-opening these closed sides makes good sense. My GOOG call spread (that I mentioned above) closed for a tidy 25% profit on risk (it's an untidy calculation, I can discuss it in detail later). That left the put spread still hanging out (untested, if you're curious) and tying up capital. Since I happen to like efficiency, and I caught the idea on Tastytrade at an opportune moment, I hacked up my spreadsheet to run some numbers. And of course it works wonderfully to sell another call spread across from the puts. I've re-opened the call position for less credit than initially (time decay) and at closer in prices (the stock has fallen and I'm now 80% OTM instead of 66% at 1 strike lower!) collecting a nice $80. So now even if The GOOG tests those puts I have more room to maneuver without losing money. To use harder numbers, my initial buying power effect was $190 but with the additional $80 that's effectively $110. Plus it's got the same expiration so one way or another the $80 will settle 15 days. I'm a happy trader.

Coming back to SINA... My puts there are tested. And while I have plenty of time to wait it makes me uncomfortable. However there's a nice call spread at 78% OTM that'll give me $0.42 to mitigate losses with.
You know, the more I do this the better I like it.

TL;DR: Stand back. I'm learning, and I need my elbow room.

Edit: The GOOG puts closed now. >.> I'm just going to let it die, I don't feel like playing that kind of game for too long. The SINA call spread order is in. If it doesn't fill today I'll try again tomorrow.

Random dissociated thoughts on theology

Literalism is the Pharisee's Crime. Or perhaps just their first mistake. Confusing the forms of religion with the soul of it.

Some people feel there are mistakes that can't be redeemed. Various addictions, 'selling your soul,' &etc. I ask in response "Is there some act sin that God cannot cleanse?" Keeping in mind (insert verse reference to thought crimes), are you any better? Is there a repentant sinner that God cannot save even from the very hand of Satan? Can evil spit in God's eye with impunity even in the most extreme of cases? Is God really powerless to save His people when they accept Him?
I have to answer myself in the negative.

Lest we descend into worry over our progeny or our fellows we must remember that God doesn't lead us into temptation that we cannot resist.

The more I go to church...

The more I attend church the less I seem to be willing to accept the idiocy.
Is this what the phrase 'losing religion' means? It's not the inverse of 'gaining' it so far as I can tell. It's a consistent, progressive chafing at the inherent flaws that others ignore. Gaining, if that's what really occurred to me some 5 or 6 years ago, felt different. Not a steady numbness or increasing indifference to flaws. Though to be fair life wasn't exactly nice at the time and perhaps it's more that I was retreating from life in general and thus not paying attention to what I was doing.
Hm.

Anyway. Since I never manage to remember thing like this later...
How is it that God is supposed to be as expressed (unchanging, love, perfect, never mistaken, etc) yet in the famous passages where Moses receives the commandments and Aaron builds a golden cow (EXO 32) God as much as says "Oh forget it. I'm just going to kill all those people and make you, Moses, a 'great nation.'" Wait, this is our benevolent god? Serious echoes of Noah here (which He said He'd never do again... that's a different argument).

Then over a couple of verses later Moses convinces Him to change His mind? Wait, I though God's opinions were immutable? How does He go from destroying these sinful people (oh yes, those that love their children are willing to slay them at the slightest insult?) to, well, we're not told hoe He felt after Moses reminded Him of His oaths... wait. Why did God, of all beings, need to be reminded of His oaths to Abraham? Hm again.